Stocking hybrid stripers at a rate of 25-to-30 per acre should be plenty of fish to stretch your string. If it's not quite enough fish to keep you busy, bump up your numbers by, say, 10 fish per acre.
I tend to be conservative when stocking predators, whether the lake is a renovation or a new start-up. Here's why: In a 50-acre lake near Seguin, TX, I once added seven sub-adult bass 14 inches long per acre and four 12-inch hybrid stripers per acre to an established bass-bluegill fishery.
Three days later, the fishing improved dramatically. Catch-rates soared, and my club members were ecstatic. Those 14-inch bass cost $7 apiece, plus my expenses for hauling them from Oklahoma, but it was money well-spent I thought.
See previous. Note that the fish salesman sold our unsuspecting Pond Boss brother 189 hybrids for a one-third acre pond, a stocking rate of nearly 600 fish per acre. Six hundred.
Now that the pond is suffering through water quality issues and a potential die-off, ask whether the rate was good for the pond owner or good for the fish salesman. Draw your own conclusions.
Mark McDonald
Editor, Pond Boss
